Now Damon Runyon, who is such a scribe as hates and despises the use of the past tense, writes most of his classic stories about the wise guys and cute dolls of Broadway in the 1920s and 1930s, and so naturally he sets them in that time. But the musical that is based on those stories and is indeed called Guys and Dolls, and is the best and funniest musical comedy ever produced, does not appear until 1950; and Abe Burrows, who writes the book of the show, and Frank Loesser, who does the music and lyrics, are cognizant of this and they set their show in their own time, too. And I will lay you odds that the superimposition of one time-frame upon another is one reason that this musical becomes what is known as timeless.

I will bet, too, that Miss Donna Feore, who directs and choreographs the new revival at the Stratford Festival, is thinking of this when she starts her production with its Times Square setting done up in black and white, like a ’30s movie, and then changes the lighting so that it appears in Technicolor, like a motion picture from the ’50s. And I have to say that even if she does not have this in mind, the transition, which is instant, amounts to what is known as a coup-de-theatre, and I apologize if I spoil it for anyone by describing it. It puts the audience in the best frame of mind for enjoying what follows.

What follows is indeed enjoyable, being an opening number that serves as a kind of urban genre picture, first danced and then sung, in which goggle-eyed tourists mingle with unconcerned citizens of Manhattan, going about their business. Some of this business might be deemed nefarious, as demonstrated by the gamblers who spend all their time consulting the racing sheets and singing about them in counterpoint, and some is highly virtuous, as with the members of the Save-A-Soul mission who parade through the town calling on sinners to repent, which the sinners show very little inclination to do.

This becomes clear in a superb song in which the gentlemen of the town pay reverent tribute to “the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York” and ask its proprietor, Nathan Detroit, where it can presently be found. Nathan is running the game, he tells us, ever since he is a juvenile delinquent but is currently having difficulty finding a location for it as the legal heat is on, which means, among other things, that “the back of the police station is out.” This number is more dynamically staged and performed than in any other production I remember, and I remember several. But there is even better to come in the second act when the crap shooters finally get to shoot craps, in a sewer, there being nowhere else available.

They roll the dice and scoop them up and pounce on their winnings and on one another in a hoodlums’ ballet that is the best thing Miss Donna ever does, from underneath either of her hats or even both together. The roof miraculously stays raised for the ensuing song in which Sky Masterson, the highest roller of all, bets the others a thousand dollars apiece against their souls, the reason being that he unexpectedly falls for Mission Sergeant Sarah Brown and promises her a dozen sinners. The song that he and the guys competitively sing is called “Luck Be a Lady,” and it is very famous. But then this score and the only songs that are not acknowledged classics are those that should be.

It is a fact, however, that all the numbers I single out so far are the province of the show’s masculine element, and it is also a fact that in this production the guys, collectively and individually, come off far better than the dolls. Sean Arbuckle may not quite look or talk as if he springs from the cobblestones of New York, but his Nathan is otherwise fine in his brow-mopping apologetics. Evan Buliung is superb as Sky, restlessly prowling every room in which he finds himself, as if searching for the limits of his own impregnability.

Then there is Steve Ross, perfect as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, the most amiably rotund of gamblers, due to the fact that he is perpetually eating. If his “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat” does not raise the roof as it is accustomed to do, that may be because it has a whole succession of hard acts to follow. One of them is the show’s title song, which Nicely and his pal Benny Southstreet, played by the contrastingly gaunt-framed and scissor-legged Mark Uhre, perform with such verve you may wish it will go on forever. There is male strength among the angels too, with Laurie Murdoch singing beautifully and acting wittily as Brother Abernathy, Sergeant Sarah’s self-appointed guardian.

Now the reason Sky falls for Sarah and she for him is that Nathan, needing cash, bets Sky he cannot take a mission doll to Havana, Cuba, which is at this time a notoriously louche destination. It turns out he can, but the trip turns out chaste as Sky discovers his inhibitions just as Sarah is losing hers. Meanwhile Nathan is trying not to face the fact that Miss Adelaide, a nightclub chanteuse who is his fiancee for 14 years, urgently wishes to be married. Part of the genius of the show is that it starts these two stories simultaneously, lets each go its own way while occasionally intersecting, and then finally ties them up together. It is also somewhat moral, as the guys find their more cynical ideas about dolls to be thoroughly misplaced.

The pattern is obscured here, however, as Blythe Wilson’s Adelaide is far too knowing; she loses the innocence in some of the funniest theatre songs ever written, and consequently the humour as well. Alexis Gordon’s Sarah is too much of a pushover, though she sings very good not to mention very loud. The whole production could go easier on the decibels, especially in the spoken dialogue; many highly comical lines fall flat due partly to the relentless amplification, though more to the actors’ apparent inability to phrase them properly. So this Guys and Dolls is less than great. But it is still more than good; and the personal appearance at the curtain call of Laura Burton, the show’s musical director, is worth going a long way to see, just as the gleeful orchestral sound over which she presides is worth going an even longer way to hear.

Guys and Dolls is in repertory through October 29 at Festival Theatre in Stratford.